“I know you,” he said to the glowering stranger. “Don’t I?”
“Yes,” the man answered and firmly turned him about.
“What are you doing?”
“Start!” the man commanded.
Kehfrey cringed as the unkempt women began to speak, all saying the same thing, but using different words and different languages. The clamour hurt his head abominably. The stone of his bewilderment became a mill grinding his mind to dust.
“Don’t fight it, Kehfrey,” the man whispered into his ear, the tone now seductive. “It only hurts if you fight.”
The man pressed hard against his back—male anatomy prominent, swollen hard with black desires. Kehfrey felt this man’s emotions somehow, the needs and the wants, as if they were in his own body. But they were wrong. Everything was wrong.
“What are you doing?” he objected.
No answer arrived. The stranger, so familiar and so not, slid a hand up his clothing until the palm settled over his heart. The other reached down into his trousers and provoked a hiss of surprise; the grip certain, forward, agonizingly wrong and right.
“Feel the power, Kehfrey!” the importunate, overwhelming stranger whispered. “Feel it! It caresses!”
“Oh!” he cried. It ached. It hurt. It made him shake uncontrollably. “Stop! It’s hurting me!” The smouldering burn in his centre became a white-hot torment.
“Don’t fight it, my love,” the man said in his ear. “Give me your power! Give it!”
Kehfrey felt the spell change. Suddenly it was a knife’s edge scraping down his gut toward his genitals. His organs burned. He screamed.
Fire flashed out of him. The man behind screamed as well, but in triumph. With a will, the stranger flung a summons outward. Kehfrey climaxed into the stranger’s hand and collapsed into the pain.
“Ah, gods! Ah, gods!” He heaved forward and retched onto grass.
“Kehfrey?”
The pain! The power! The stretching!
And then the black of surcease.
***
Vehre started. Thali and Unene had just darted away from him. They both raced down the hill toward the lower wall.
“Thali!” he shouted. She didn’t respond. There were other voices raised in outcry. Vehre turned his head and witnessed monks bellowing, chasing frantically after the witches assigned to them.
“Thali!” Vehre roared, now frightened.
She paused, but Unene continued onward.
“Thali!” He raced toward her. She faced down the hill, but didn’t move her feet.
“Thali!” he shouted again. He caught her to him.
She looked at him, skin white with horror. “They are summoned! The hags have summoned! Stop them! They will all be killed!”
“Oh, gods!” Vehre whispered and then bellowed so loudly his voice echoed back to the mount from the enemy ward. “The witches are spelled! Catch them! Bind them! Catch them before it’s too late!”
Soldiers, monks, they grabbed the women and wrestled them down, those that they could, but some witches shouted curses and sent men spinning off. Male voices lifted in pain and terror.
That was the moment King Quei called his attack. Vehre watched the first missile fly toward the mount. It struck the ground a few dozen yards from them. A cloud of white dust exploded out of the bulbous tip. The men nearby screamed as the powder spread over them. They screamed and they died. In the turmoil, more witches escaped.
“Thali?” Vehre said, staring across the slope at men spitting up blood and bleeding from their noses and eyes. “Why did you stop running when the others didn’t?”
“Because of you. Because you share my power.”
“Oh. It’s this sex business again.”
“Yes, you ugly boar. You saved my life by loving me.”
“Oh, well. That’s all right, then.” Turning back to the monks behind them, he screamed. “Chant the ward faster! Get the damned lowest one up!”
Another missile flew and hit the dirt. More men died.
***
“We need him again!”
He shifted restlessly.
“No!” said an angry male voice. “The last spell hurt him badly! He must rest!”
He opened his eyes and stared about in confusion. He was on a cot within a tent. There was a man with him and a cadaverous woman.
“Where am I?”
Distantly, he heard screaming. People were in pain. People were dying.
“Kehfrey,” the man hovering over him murmured. “Kehfrey, be still. Rest!”
“We need him!” the skinny woman at his side insisted. “Not all the witches were brought over!”
He startled as a woman screamed nearby. He jerked upright.
“No!” the dark-eyed man commanded. He pushed him back. “Rest!”
“I can’t! Someone is being hurt!”
The man wheeled toward the skinny woman and barked an order at her, but not the expected end of suffering. “Get them to do that far from here! Gag the prisoners!”
“We need him!” the hag shouted. “We must finish the white witches off! We must rip their minds apart while the wards are down! The monks chant them up again as we argue!”
Infuriated, the man struck her. “Get out and do as I say! Go! Go!”
She lifted herself from the ground and licked at her bleeding lip. Outside, another woman screamed. The skinny hag laughed and walked backward to the flap. She sneered at the one who had abused her. “Weak! You are weak!” she hissed and disappeared from the tent. “Save me a heart!” she screamed outside. “Save me one!”
There was laughter and jeering at her words. Another woman shrieked in agony.
Kehfrey attempted to get up again. The man cried no and thrust him down, but he struggled against the pressure. A shadow leapt from the corner and sank into him. All went black.
Marun rose, staring down at Kehfrey in dismay. “Oh, Kehfrey!” he whispered. “I never deserved you!”
He fled from the tent and took his guilt and wrath out on the rebellious hags.
***
The ballistae of the enemy were unable to fire the full height of the mount, but Ugoth’s guards forced the king to the top of the hill all the same. It was only a matter of time before the Shadow Master copied Ugoth’s tactics and spelled the giant arrows to give them more range. Soon after Ugoth’s arrival, the combined gang of guardian monks escorted Vik up. His hair was wet, his clothing changed to fresh ones.
“Start a warding chant,” Ugoth commanded the holy men arriving with him.
“We just finished one outside your pavilion,” Keth reported. “We have wounded gathering there now. Vehre has come up with Thali and the remaining witches. He and his Carmet brethren are going to do a cleansing over them. Some still feel the compulsion to leave.”
“Good. Start another ward here. Then go wherever you need to make more.”
“What about Vik?”
“He stays with me. Marun doesn’t care what happens to him anymore.”
Keth nodded. He and the other monks began the chant.
Vik stepped up to Ugoth’s side and looked down at the mayhem below. “I was told Kehfrey almost broke free,” he said.
“You didn’t see it?”
“No. Keth knocked me out. I was going to kill myself.”
“That would have been a waste,” Ugoth said. “I might need your other arm, all fresh and bloody, to get Herfod to run again.”
Vik laughed. “You have but to ask,” he said, and Ugoth knew he meant it. Vik had sunk far below despair.
A messenger ran up toward him. “First rider to Prince Ufrid’s relay has returned! The call to battle has been passed onward!”
“Good,” Ugoth acknowledged. His brother should get the message in another three hours. Ufrid would be out of Forge Canyon and on the enemy’s back before the supper hour. Marun would be crunched between two armies.
“Good,” he whispered to himself. Let his brother drive his sword up Marun’s spi
ne. “Come quickly, brother! Come quickly!”
Chapter Eleven
Marun paced back and forth and glowered at Forge Mount. Despite having battered the greater ward down, despite having butchered most of the white witches, despite the poison powder sent to punish the enemy, King Ugoth held the mount from him. Marun had gained nothing. He had lost as much as his enemy. Currently the two sides stared at each other from within their opposing wards. It was late afternoon, and the war was at a standstill.
“Damn him!” Marun snarled.
Those gods-be-damned traps before the enemy walls had taken out the majority of his undead army. One had taken out two of his hags. There was a ridge of useless corpses before the lowest stone wall, a mound of putrid flesh that must now be climbed by his forces to attack the enemy. The traps had relied on holy prayer and not a single purified corpse could be raised again.
“Damn him!”
Ugoth was brilliant. Marun had to admit that much. The Ulmeniran sovereign had come up with solutions to threats that not even the Stohar king had used. During the war with the Stohar, Quei had retreated time and again into the hardest of rocky terrain to avoid the earth dragon. He had sortied out to harry the Winfellan forces in short spurts, travelling in the night to attack from behind, only to retreat before Marun’s warriors were fully engaged. He had been a formidable opponent, a crafty one, but prone to striking and hiding more than fighting outright.
But Ugoth? He stood his ground and let his enemy send forces out to be slaughtered on hidden snares. The intelligence from the traitor Ufrid had been all but useless. Ugoth had either never trusted his brother or he’d altered plans after Ufrid had split from the main army. And now more wards had been chanted upon the hill. Ugoth’s monks had erected five levels of them. His army could retreat upward if the first failed and so on to the last.
Worsening the Shadow Master’s position, the remaining white witches had brought his hag-spelled ward down. With their power multiplied tenfold by the monks who chanted with them, they had rained fire and destruction on the Stohar artillery.
And the dragon? It still whimpered in the depths. If Ufrid turned on him, Marun would shortly find himself smashed between two armies. If!
“Damn Ufrid as well!” he hissed. That bastard had better not change his mind.
But if he had some way of knowing that Ugoth held his own, he just might.
Damn the Ulmeniran royalty! Damn them all! Marun grimaced at the hill. Up there, his enemy looked down on him in disdain. He could just feel the contempt.
“Go up there!” a voice snapped.
He whirled. The water witch stood a safe distance from him. The side of her face was yet swollen from the blow he had given her that morning. Just from this, Marun knew she had put her soul back in her body. He couldn’t fathom why she would do it now of all times. “What do you mean?” he snarled.
“Go up to the mount! Use your first master’s skill!”
“I never learned it properly!” he shouted. “I can only use his old entries!”
“Do it!” she shouted back. “Go to the temple! Drive our enemy down toward us!” Her eyes blackened momentarily, and Marun understood who really spoke.
“You bitch!” he snarled at his mistress. “He will hate me forever now! I should have let him run!”
“He will not hate you forever.”
“I hurt his brother!” he screamed. “I attack his lover! I should just walk up there and let them blast me with fire! You have made my life a misery! I should have listened to Kehfrey years ago! Bitch! Foul bitch!”
Such impudence could not go unpunished. The goddess sent him to his knees. Darkness curled around him. The black was cold and it was angry, and none of the shadows belonged to him. They were hers, her spite, her desire, her contempt. They forced him down until his head touched the earth. Bowed in false submission, he felt the hag touch his back.
Shall I take you down, my sweet servant? the Ancient Power whispered. Do you wish to end it all now?
“What other course have you left me!” he hissed. “You have made a mockery of the love Kehfrey and I shared!”
It hasn’t ended. He still loves you. And he will be yours if you win this war. I have made a vow. I will keep it.
“He will see me dead! He made a vow as well! I have nothing left to hope for!”
You must trust me. Even should you be harmed, he will breathe the life back into your body. He has chosen you. You will be there when it is time.
“What are you saying? Tell me who he is?” He attempted to lift his head, but could not. The shadows cradled him like loving chains.
Now is not the time. This battle must be played. I will have what I want!
“And what do you want?” he snarled at the earth. “I do not trust you. You want more than is apparent. You play with all of us!”
I will have my due! I will have all that is mine! You will obey! Spell yourself up to the mount! The conduit is still open. My power will rise for you within the temple. It shall be strong. Do it. Do it now! Drive the enemy down!
“Do it your damned self! You’re here in that skinny bitch! Use her body and go! Urkh!” A shadow gripped his head and ground his face into the dirt.
Yes, why don’t I use her body now that I’m here? Why not use yours? It’s stronger. Physically. Tell me, Sevet. The mouldering breath of the hag warmed one of his ears. Your soul has no resistance against me, so why shouldn’t I just take your body? Tell me.
The imprisoning tendrils relaxed. Marun heaved his face up and inhaled hoarsely.
I’m waiting, Sevet. Tell me why.
“What …?” He spat dirt. “Why ask me?” he said, but then faltered. If she hadn’t seized his body before now, there was a reason. Throughout history, she remained in the depths of the world. Why had she never chosen to live on the crust? What possible reason would confine a goddess to such an existence? “I don’t understand.”
No, you don’t. Without me, there is no world, and without the world, there is no life, and if I am here, what becomes of the world? The hand on his back petted him like a dog. So you’ll take care of this little matter for me, won’t you, Sevet, my fine servant? And I’ll take care of the world, which is much too big for you. The shadows yanked his face into the dirt a second time.
Go to the mount now! the ancient power commanded. The hand left his back. The shadows sank into the earth. He straightened, wiped dirt from his mouth, blinked away grit. The hag was stalking down the knoll away from him.
“Bitch!” he hissed at her back. “Aren’t you the divine mother hen, to give me a chicken and the egg riddle?”
She didn’t turn around, but an emaciated hand came up and waved the insult off. He hit the earth with his fists.
A pair of brown boots planted themselves at his side. Startled, he looked up. “Kehfrey!”
“Who are you?” Kehfrey demanded. His hazel eyes were clouded with pain and confusion, his skin pallid from exhaustion.
Marun rose hastily. “You must go back and rest, my love.”
“This is a war,” Kehfrey said. “I thought I was dreaming, but it wasn’t a dream.”
“No,” Marun replied. “This is a war.”
“You were being hurt by the enemy.”
Marun stared at him in surprise. “The enemy?”
“Yes. The darkness. It was hurting you.”
“That wasn’t the enemy,” he refuted.
Kehfrey frowned disbelievingly. “Yes. It was.” He looked down Marun’s shape slowly. “It’s twisted inside of you. I should have seen it before.” Despairingly, he turned away.
“Where are you going?” Marun cried, his anxiety mounting.
“I don’t know,” Kehfrey said. “I don’t know anymore.” He fell to the earth in a dead faint.
Marun hurried to his side and lifted him gently. “You came to save me,” he murmured. “You came despite the pain.”
Tears of remorse almost blinded him as he carried Kehfrey back to the tent.
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***
“Damn it!” Ugoth snarled. He paced the ledge from which he had chosen to observe the mount and the enemy on the further rise, paced and worried that his brother had not yet arrived. “Damn it, Ufrid!”
Where the hells was he?
“Something must have held him up,” Abbot Vehre said. “He should have been at Marun’s back by now.”
“I know!” Ugoth put his hands in his hair and curled his fingers in the strands. “I need him!”
“It’s of no matter at the moment. Marun has backed off.”
“To do what?” Ugoth cried. “He isn’t just pacing and worrying like I am. He’s doing something. He’s likely planning to make use of Herfod again.”
“I don’t think so,” the witch Thali interjected. “There was a shudder in the earth the last time he was used. It was a painful thing to feel. Marun hurt him badly.”
Ugoth wished he hadn’t needed to hear that. “How badly?”
“Bad enough to make him useless for a while,” she answered. “Bad enough to kill him if he tries again. He resists. I could feel his resistance. The man is simply ….” She hesitated.
“Simply what?” Ugoth said impatiently.
“He’s simply beyond human,” she ended. “I mean; how can he do this? Fight the goddess so amazingly?”
Ugoth stared at her. Neither she nor Vehre knew that Herfod couldn’t die. Marun could use him forever, hurt him forever. It was the Shadow Master who was beyond human.
Ugoth turned away before his torment became all too visible. “Can you do anything, Thali? Can you cast anything to learn what Marun tries now?”
“No. I’m sorry. I don’t have any foreseeing talent.”
“Does anyone else?”
“None of the remaining ones.”
She gazed at the king’s back and sensed pain. His Majesty’s hurt clouded the air around him. She looked at Vehre. He shook his head, letting her know to be silent. Ugoth dealt best with this suffering on his own. Sympathy he did not want or need.
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